share:

OVERVIEW

powered by AFI

Brief Synopsis

A female executive hires a male secretary.

Having depleted his private income, artist Tom Verney accepts a job as private secretary to a tough female advertising executive named A. M. MacGregor. Tom finds his position humiliating because "Mac" uses him as a foil for her clients. One night, she pretends he is her fiancé to outwit the jealous wife of a client, and on another evening, uses him to captivate the interest of Ethel Caldwell, a racy Southerner whose brother Jonathan is a wealthy tobacco manufacturer who hates women. Trouble arises when Mac, who has fired her previous male secretaries for trying to seduce her, finds herself falling in love with Tom, but refuses to acknowledge it. In order to get the Caldwell account, Tom agrees to pretend that he is an advertising executive after Mac promises him a $10,000 bonus, which Tom would then use to buy a house in Mexico and paint. Tom accepts Ethel's invitation to work on the cigarette campaign at the Caldwell mansion in the South, and while he and Ethel entertain each other, Mac steams with jealousy in New York. Mac finally goes to the Caldwell home herself, to the delight of Jonathan, who in spite of his distrust of women, has fallen deeply in love with her. Tom confides in Jonathan that he is in love with Mac and that Ethel has agreed to allow him to use their platonic friendship to make Mac jealous. Jonathan then serves his own interests by encouraging Tom to continue his tactics until Mac becomes so angry at Tom that she accepts Jonathan's marriage proposal. Having developed a clever advertising campaign and gotten a signed contract from the Caldwells, Tom returns to New York. One day, Mac's ineffectual partner, G. B. Atwater, brings Tom his bonus and advises him that although Mac and Jonathan's wedding is set, Mac is miserable. Tom sends a semi-nude portrait of Mac as a wedding gift, and the Caldwells assume that Mac posed for the painting. Mac denies the accusation, but when she realizes that Jonathan does not believe her, she breaks the engagement and walks out. Later, Mac encounters Tom in a car pulling a trailer and angrily throws stones at him. When a train threatens to crash into the car on some railroad tracks, however, both Tom and Mac jump into the car and head for Mexico together.